CONTRACEPTION IN THE CLASSROOM: Marketing the Pill to Teenagers in I 980s America.

This article traces the history of Straight Talk, a sex education curriculum introduced into U.S. high schools in the mid-1980s. Straight Talk was sponsored by Ortho Pharmaceutical, who offered the program as a "public service" to combat the socalled epidemic of teenage pregnancy that had inspired panic on both sides of the political spectrum. In fact, Straight Talk was part of a campaign to promote Ortho's newest product: the low- dose, multiphasic pill Ortho-Novum -1 /-lj7. Drawing on media reports, curricular materials and public relations (PR) documents, I argue that Straight Talk is a prime example of"shadow marketing" in the pharmaceutical industry, in which companies use PR strategies to skirt regulations on direct-to-consumer advertising. While on the surface Straight Talk looked like a typical comprehensive sex education curriculum, its bias toward the Pill-in particular, the low-dose multiphasic pill-belied Ortho's claims of neutrality. The curriculum's promotion of the Pill also came at the expense ofother contraceptive methods, such as the condom, a troubling omission in the age of HIV/AIDS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]